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Firefox’s Redesigned Preferences Feel More like the Web

Firefox’s Preferences, until now, have required navigation through a cumbersome floating window where it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for. This window is a classic example of a common software problem: settings are slowly added onto the interface as new functionality is introduced, and eventually it sags under the weight.

The mess that is current Firefox Preferences

Until now, that is!

The Firefox UX team is excited to announce that brand new, beautiful Preferences are now the default in Firefox nightlies and will soon be in release Firefox. In this redesign, the interface is visually consistent, the information architecture is improved, and the whole thing is rendered in content space rather than as a separate window.

Firefox’s new in-content preferences

Why is it important that Preferences are in the content space rather than a separate window?

Consistency across devices. By using the content space, we no longer have to rely on the ability of a device to draw separate windows and dialogs. This is particularly important on tablets and phones, where window management is more difficult. Now, users of mobile Firefox will see a familiar interface when move to desktop Firefox, and vice versa.

Consistency across operating systems. Windows, OSX, and Linux all create windows and dialogs differently, which means the user’s experience with Preferences was different depending on the OS. Now, as we draw this interface within Firefox, we can make it look and feel identical across systems.

Consistency with the web. Ultimately, the browser is a doorway to the rest of the web. For the browser to behave like a dialog-heavy desktop application rather than the web itself was jarringly anachronistic. Beneficially, rendering like a website also means users won’t need to find and manage a separate window in addition to their open tabs.

Space to grow. Not being bounded by a small, floating window means we can create richer customization experiences. The Add-ons manager has already moved to content space, and we’ve been able to explore richer use cases as a result. Similarly, expect to see innovative customization experiments as well as the usual Firefox settings.

And before you ask, yes, the next step is absolutely a search field in Preferences to summon the exact setting you’re looking for. This is needed particularly so users won’t have to “learn” our interface, but can instead focus on their task.

A special thank you goes to Senior Visual Designer Michael Maslaney, who’s been spearheading Project Chameleon, the style guide behind this redesign. Another thank you goes to MSU students Owen Carpenter, Joe Chan, Jon Rietveld, and Devan Sayles for creating the award-winningfirst version of Firefox’s in-content Preferences in May 2012.

This change makes a lot of sense for mobile versions, but there is no good reason to push this to desktop versions. What I fear is yet another case of “let’s cut preferences nobody seems to use”, which, sadly, has been too frequent in the recent history of Firefox. Our once beloved browser is becoming less customizable each time, and that gives power users more reasons to migrate to the dumbed-down browser of Google: Firefox is becoming more and more a clone of Chrome, sailing away from its unique starts.

Remember that today, given all the marketing of Google, most of the people that use Firefox and stay away from Chrome are recommended by us power users. You would do the right thing if you took us into account. Really.

This unfortunately will be used as yet another excuse to remove preferences that power users overwhelmingly tend to rely on.

As the commenter above noted, this is unnecessary on desktop Firefox. It appears yet again an attempt to optimize Firefox for tablet usage, when in reality there is no reason to do so for software that runs on the desktop.

Yet another lame idea from the firefox UI team. I’m sure this looks good on a mobile device but moving away from using OS-appropriate UI design for things like this just makes it harder for people to use.

I wish I could get a job where it was mandatory to show up to work blind drunk every day. I say that because it’s the only way I can square some of your recent design choices with reality.

I agree with Antonio, you’re diluting the reasons that I use firefox and I have currently switched to waterfox.
“Consistency across devices” you seriously need to ditch this whole concept, it is not required or desired. Desktop and tablet/phone are two completely different platforms with different requirements from the end user. By unifying interfaces you’re actually making things worse for both platforms. I don’t need loads of options on my phone and want full customizability on my desktop.
If I liked the look of Chrome I’d be using it instead of spending my time writing a message hoping that someone at mozilla will see it and see sense.

really looking forward to that.
and if you give the “power users” all the features they treasure, you will not only make the browser easier to use for non technophiles, but also appeal to people like me and my peers, who value a sleek and minimalistic UI/UX.